Opening Night at the Metropole

Ticket to fame and units worth a fortune at the Metropole. These were given out by the elevator doors.

For the uninitiated—as I was until last night—let me just say: condo debut parties are a hoot. For those of you who glanced up into the drizzly evening sky and noticed some bright spotlights dancing around on the clouds just north of downtown, well this was why.

It was opening night at the Metropole, a $70 million, 240,000 square foot building with 90 condos, right across from the Whole Foods on P Street in the Logan Circle area. The condos range from studios starting at the mid $400,000s to penthouses at $2.3 million.

The various invitations that circulated beforehand touted the party as an affair to remember, full of  "glitz and glamour of grand Hollywood fashion" with a “Golden Age of Hollywood” theme.

Sounds like a Bat Mitzvah.

Little did I know people would actually show up. And not just a few wanderers, on their way to the grocery store, who noticed a bar set up in the lobby. The place was stunningly packed.

"There's been so much bad news about the economy. Everyone wanted to be out," says Matt Hagan, publicist for the Metropole.

Hagan said he expected roughly 500 people to attend the event. The caterer counted 1,060. To anyone whose champagne flute I knocked on the way to the elevators, sorry 'bout that.